This is the fourth disc in the London Sinfonietta’s
Jerwood Series, as well as being the latest enterprising
release on the Sinfonietta’s own label.

It is also bears a dedication to the orchestra’s
long-serving principal flautist Sebastian Bell, whose
passing in 2007 robbed the contemporary music world of
a tireless devotee - a man who lived and enjoyed life
to the full. Causton’s short work for solo flute, Sleep,
that Bell plays here with such eloquence, is a poignant
and fitting reminder of a man and musician who will be
sadly missed.

A brief glance at the Jerwood Foundation’s website
reveals that the Foundation is “dedicated to imaginative
and responsible funding in all areas of human endeavour
and excellence, with particular emphasis on the arts”.
Certainly its contribution to the establishment of the
Sinfonietta’s own recording venture has been a critical
part of the label’s early development. One can only hope
that it is a relationship that will continue to prove
artistically productive for some time to come.

William Attwood’s involvement with the Sinfonietta
stretches back to 2000 when the ensemble commissioned
his Tourbillons for the State of the Nation festival
of the same year. For a composer whose studies with Michael
Finnissy took place alongside his reading of modern
languages at Oxford, the patterns and syntax of language
are often inextricably linked to his music, perhaps no
more so than in Iwwer Tiermen (“above towers”)
where the inspiration is drawn from the poetry of Jean-Louis
Kieffer. Originating from Lorraine, Kieffer wrote not
in French but in Mosel-Fränkisch, a dialect often consisting,
in the composer’s own words, of “arcane and strung out
syntax, at other times of blunt vernacular”.

They are qualities often reflected in the music,
which has the power to both invigorate and disturb. The
mysterious explorations of the opening bars soon give
way to rapid changes of mood. These range from twisted,
even distorted brass solos to high, soaring woodwind
passages and fluctuations of dynamic that can be as dramatic
and extreme as those of mood. Easy music it isn’t, but
Attwood has an acute ear for texture and sonority that
when in the hands of artists as tuned-in as Nicholas
Kok and the London Sinfonietta, reveal an at times strikingly
original mind at work.

Joanna Bailie’s residence in Brussels since 2001,
coupled with earlier studies in Holland with another
British émigré Richard Barrett, partly accounts for the
fact that her reputation is particularly prevalent on
the Continent. She has however enjoyed a presence at
the Huddersfield Festival as well as having seen home-grown
performances by the likes of the Sinfonietta and Apartment
House.

The basic premise of Five Famous Adagios is
an interesting, if arguably paradoxical one. The adagios
in question, all drawn from works by Bach, are dissected
into key cadence points - or “horizontal frequency bands
as the composer refers to them - the cumulative effect
of Bailie’s treatment of them being such that the material
becomes progressively more distant from the recognisable
harmonies of the opening sections as the work progresses.
The paradox could be seen as the composer’s effective
distancing of herself from any emotional element to the
music, which she maintains is “grounded in the idea of
sonic investigation and music as process” rather than
the “romantic and atmospheric”.

The clue possibly lies in the work’s original
realisation using computer programmes, the version for
string quartet given here by the London Sinfonietta,
only being prepared later. Whatever the composer’s intentions,
whether in live performance or recording, the “atmospheric” element
of the music is almost impossible to divorce oneself
from, the five brief movements often existing on the
edge of audibility and creating their own eerily haunting
sound-world.

The name of Richard Causton is arguably the most
recognisable of the three composers on the disc, Causton
being another composer who has benefited from the Sinfonietta’s
championship. In his case this can be traced back to
the work that proved to be his breakthrough, The Persistenceof
Memory, first performed under Oliver Knussen in 1995.
Sleep grew from the working
material for Phoenix and at three minutes is a
brief, yet affecting night sequence that draws additional
inspiration from the poem Mythistorema by George
Seferis.

Of the four works on the disc however, it is Phoenix that
leaves the most lasting and powerful impression. The
recipient of a 2006 Royal Philharmonic Award for chamber-scale
composition, the work is cast in two movements of roughly
equal length. From the gentle oscillations of the opening,
it proceeds to streams of piano sound (“the piano’s only
hope of sustaining a single note is through constant,
rapid repetition” states Causton in his programme note)
pitted against the sustaining sounds of flute, clarinet,
violin and cello. The second movement’s clearly discernable
development of material from the first culminates in
a brief, touchingly simple coda which lends the work
an impressive architectural unity. Allied with Causton’s
imaginative use of his instrumental forces, Phoenix is
one of those works that prompts further exploration of
this talented composer’s output.

Another worthwhile addition to the London Sinfonietta’s Jerwood
series then, once again drawing attention to the rich
diversity of young, British compositional talent. Other
than a few prerequisite coughs and splutters from the
live audience the recordings are as vivid and natural
as one could wish for although at forty-one minutes,
playing time is hardly on the generous side.
Christopher Thomas

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